Gene Roddenberry Initially Envisioned A Very Different Version Of Star Trek's Wesley Crusher

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The original casting sheets for "Star Trek: The Next Generation," first sent out among Paramount in 1986, were written before the show's characters had been finalized. Some of the well-known crew members of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D were familiar, but others were dramatically different than what audiences ended up seeing. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, for instance, was originally named Julien Picard. Worf hadn't been invented yet. Most dramatically, the security officer Tasha Yar was originally intended to be a Latina character named Macha Hernandez. Further development and casting coups led to the various changes.

Also dramatically different: the teenage wunderkind Wesley Crusher, played by actor Wil Wheaton , was — at one point durin